Genista cinerea (Vill.) DC.
Spartium cinereum Vill.
Eng.: Slender Broom. Spa.: Escobón, hiniestra, giniestra, retama macho. Fre.: Genêt cendré.
Shrub or subshrub up to 1.5(2) m in height, broom-like, unarmed, hermaphrodite, highly branched, with erect stems, sparsely foliose. Stems and old branches with brownish bark, smooth, turning glabrous. Young branchlets striated longitudinally, with 8-10 T-shaped ribs, hairy, with sericeous hairs on the ribs and short uncinate hairs on the valleys. Leaves alternate, unifoliolate, with stipules —stipular organ with 3 ribs—, subsessile, with leaflets (3)5-10 × 1-3 mm, elliptic to spatulate or oblong-lanceolate, briefly attenuated at the base, acute or obtuse or even mucronate, when old green and glabrous on the upper side, and sericeous-silvery on the underside. Flowers solitary or in groups of 2-3 on the stipular organs of the branches of the previous year, rarely in inflorescences racemiform pauciflorous, pedicellate, with pedicel up to 5 mm, sericeous. Calyx (3.5)6-7.5 mm, sericeous or with patent hairs, deeply split into 2 subequal lips longer than the tube, the upper lip bipartite into 2 triangular-ovate segments, and the lower lip tridentate, somewhat larger than the upper lip. Corolla 10-16 mm, papilionoid, yellow, marcescent, with standard ovate, rounded or emarginate at the apex, glabrous or hairy on the dorsal side of the midrib, subequal or somewhat longer than the wings and the keel. Androecium monadelphous, with 10 stamens. Ovary sericeous, and elliptical and introrse stigma. Pod 10-21 × 3-5 mm, linear-oblong, compressed, torulose, sericeous-silvery, with 1-5 seeds. Seeds 2-3 mm, ovoid or subglobose, smooth, a very dark green to blackish, without an aril.
Flowering:
April to June.
Fruiting:
June to August.
Habitat:
Forests, thickets and rocky outcrops in low and medium mountain areas, in dry, semiarid environments.
Distribution:
SW Europe, and NW Africa (Algeria and Tunisia). In Algeria it grow in the NE (dry areas of the NE —mounts of Djelfa, Aures, Bellezma, Tébessa, etc.), and in Tunisia is common along the central mountains, of Ghardimau towards the N and up to Jebel Sened from the S, reaching towards the NE up to the mountains close to Hammamet.
Observations:
A very similar taxon to the previous species —considered a subspecies of it by some authors— is G. ramosissima (Desf.) Poir. [Spartium ramosissimum Desf., G. cinerea subsp. ramosissima (Desf.) Quézel & Santa]. It differs in its flowers briefly pedicellate (pedicel 1.5-3 mm), its densely villous calyx and the hairy standard on its lower half and the midrib. It is an Ibero-Mauritanian endemic, in the African territory it grows in Morocco (NE Middle Atlas, and mountains of Beni-Snassen), and in Algeria (western Atlas Tellian). Another similar but prostrate species, barely above 35 cm from the ground, is G. pseudopilosa Coss., with flowers arranged in terminal racemes on the stems of the current year. It is also an Ibero-Mauritanian endemic, from SE Spain and NW Africa, where it grows in dry forests and even semiarid mounts of Morocco (Middle and High Atlas) and in northern Algeria, especially in the Saharan Atlas.
Conservation status:
The 3 species are relatively common and are not considered threatened. Currently, G. cinerea y G. ramosissima have not been assessed at a global level on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Whilst G. pseudopilosa is listed in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
as Least Concern (LC) at global level (Groom, 2012).